It's April, And Hundreds Of Forest Fires Are Already Burning Across Siberia From The Urals To Baikal
This past winter has been ridiculously warm for large sections of Siberia. From the Yamal Peninsula to Lake Baikal to the thinning ice of the Arctic Ocean and back down to the Sea of Okhotsk, temperatures have ranged from 4 to nearly 7 degrees Celsius above normal throughout the entire first quarter of 2017.
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(4th Consecutive year of extreme Siberian cold season warmth brings with it the heightened risk of early wildfires. Image source: NASA GISS.)
Climate reanalysis shows these far above average temperatures extending well into April. And, as a result, the Arctic chill that typically settles over this often-frozen region has been greatly reduced throughout winter and on into early spring.
2017 marks the 4th consecutive year of excessive winter warmth for this section of our world. A human-emissions-driven rise of abnormal heat that brings with it consistently earlier thaws, disruptive permafrost melt, and the freeing of new, deep-running, peat-like fuels for wildfires. A fuel that can smolder on through winter to again mar the land with new surface fires once the thin covering of snow draws back. An event that is occurring earlier and earlier as the decades and the great outpourings of oil, gas, and coal based carbon into the atmosphere wear on.
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(Multiple wildfires and hotspots visible in this Sunday, April 22nd LANCE MODIS satellite shot of Siberia.)
On Saturday, April 22nd, the same day that tens of thousands of people marched to support climate scientists besieged by amoral corporate and political powers linked to the fossil fuel industry, multiple small fires flared along the thawing edge of that greatly warmed Siberia. A number of the more western blazes, intense enough to emit smoke plumes visible in these LANCE-MODIS satellite shots, appeared to have already expanded to over 1,000 acres.
By Sunday, the fires sparking closer to Lake Baikal further east had also grown their own series of tell-tale smoke plumes. One particular blaze in central Siberia appeared to have produced a 2.5 x 6 mile long burn scar in just one day (about 10,000 acres).
EDIT
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/04/24/hauntingly-freakish-siberian-wildfires-now-flicker-to-life-in-april/
